When you think of famous physicists or chemists, your mind might go to several different people. Nevertheless, Marie Curie should absolutely come to mind, considering how important a scientist she was and what she discovered alongside her husband, Pierre Curie (and on her own). Marie Curie won the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pierre, for their research in “radiation phenomena,” per the Nobel Prize website. She then won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry on her own for “the isolation of radium.”
With these achievements, she became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win it twice and the only person to win it in two different scientific fields. And with all of her work in scientific fields, making discoveries that shaped modern science, it makes sense that our quote of the day includes her words about progress.
Marie Curie was born in Poland on Nov. 7, 1867, and always kept such a love for her home country. Not only did she teach her two daughters Polish and took them to visit the country often, but she also named polonium, one of the elements she and Pierre discovered, after Poland, per Britannica. As a young woman, she became a governess after her mother died and her father couldn’t support her anymore, teaching herself through reading on her own, per the Marie Curie charity. She then went to Paris to live with her sister in 1891 and started college at Sorbonne University. She met Pierre Curie there and they married in 1895.
In addition to discovering polonium, she and Pierre also discovered radium soon after; they both went on to study radiation and radioactivity. Her husband died in 1906, and “despite her grief,” Curie became a professor at Sorbonne University, becoming the first female professor there.
Curie died on July 4, 1934, due to aplastic anemia, which was caused by her work with radiation. Her hard work and dedication to her work are not only admirable but also really play into how meaningful her quote about advancement is; she, more than anyone else, knew the price of progress.
Related: Quote of the Day by Karen Horney, Psychoanalyst: ‘If You Want To Be Proud of Yourself, Then Do Things in Which You Can Take Pride’
Quote of the Day by Marie Curie
CanvaPro/Parade
“I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy.”
This quote appears in the education book, Java Connector Architecture: Building Custom Connectors and Adapters (2002) by Atul Apte. The official Nobel Prize website also attributes this quote to Curie.
If anyone knows a thing or two about progress, it’s Curie. According to Britannica, during World War I, she and her daughter Irène worked on developing the use of X-radiology. As the National Park Service reported, she provided X-rays for about 1 million soldiers during the war. Curie was world-renowned by that point, and she went on to found the Curie Institute in Paris in 1920 and the Curie Institute in Warsaw, which are still around today.
All of that, in addition to her countless other achievements and accomplishments, Curie was responsible for the advancement of modern science. And as Britannica also reported, Curie’s research—along with Irène and Irène’s later-husband, Frédéric Joliot’s, contributions—made way for Sir James Chadwick to discover the neutron later on. This then also led to the discovery of artificial radioactivity in 1934 by Irene and Frédéric Joliot-Curie.
Related: Psychiatrist Alfred Adler on the ‘Meanings We Give to Situations’ and Choosing Our Own Paths
Deeper Meaning of Marie Curie’s Quote—Progress Is ‘Neither Swift nor Easy’
Marie Curie’s research created a lot of progress and advanced modern science in ways that we still benefit from today. But progress isn’t easy; it involves hard work, ambition and determination. And it’s not fast either; any scientific advancements and discoveries Curie made took years, and some even continued after her death, either by her daughter or other scientists.
Curie’s words remind us all that any growth you achieve—whether that’s in your career, in the greater scientific world or in your personal life—won’t be handed to you and won’t happen overnight. It’s good to be realistic about the long and hard road ahead. As someone with the same initials—Miley Cyrus—once said: “Life’s a climb, but the view is great.”
Related: Quote of the Day: Psychotherapist Viktor Frankl on Choosing Your ‘Attitude in Any Given Set of Circumstances’
More Quotes from Marie Curie
- “One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.”
- “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.”
- “The older one gets, the more one feels that the present moment must be enjoyed, comparable to a state of grace.”
- “I am one of those who think like Nobel, that humanity will draw more good than evil from new discoveries.”
- “Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.”
- “I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale.”
- “Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.”
Up Next:
Related: Writer Mary Renault on How Hate Can Consume Us Like Love: ‘What We Loathe, We Graft Into Our Very Soul’